Sportsnet.ca -- Rick Dipietro is choosing security over money with his latest contract.

Sportsnet has learned the New York Islanders have agreed to terms with goaltender Rick Dipietro on a 15-year contract that will pay the stopper $67.5 million dollars.

The contract is based on $4.5 million dollars across the board. The Islanders are expected to make an annoucment as early as today. It is expected the Islanders will also announce Victor Koslov has agreed to a 1-year deal that will pay him $865,000.

tantalum wrote:Snow is nothing more than a puppet and the point of contact for the Isles GM by committee.

In the end Wang is making all the decisions. Just what a hockey team needs...a non-hockey guy having the final say in personnel decisions.

It's why Smith was fired. He had the audacity to be an actual GM.

Smith left because he didn't want the committee making all the decisions- it has never worked and as it seems right now, it ain't working with the Isles. The biggest indicator of what is wrong with the organization is when Lafontaine left. When i guy with his credentials bolts- you know there is a problem.

Rising Sun Canuck wrote:
Smith left because he didn't want the committee making all the decisions- it has never worked and as it seems right now, it ain't working with the Isles. The biggest indicator of what is wrong with the organization is when Lafontaine left. When i guy with his credentials bolts- you know there is a problem.

As i said Smith left/fired/forced out because he tried to be a GM. I think he liked the GM by committe thing on the surface. I think he thought that as GM he had the final decisions and the committe was for advice and to get some sort of consensus such that everyone pulled on the rope in the same direction. Something that is needed when the front office is assembled by a guy like Wang and a "GM" isn't allowed to bring together his own team. It just doesn't work. You need a guy at the helm that is charge not some poxy committee.

You know is Wang wanted to be a GM why not just hire himself?

The Islanders "management" is laughable and it will find it's way down to teh product on the ice.

Is it correct that he's 24 years old?! So he'll be making $4.5 million when he's 39 (which is his number, do you think Wang saw some kind of sign in that?), or if he retires close to the end, it'll still count against the cap for years...my God, this is unbelievable, but HILARIOUS!

Are they THAT sure this is their guy? Geez, I'm waiting to see where our prospects are before I decide if we'd want to bring back LUONGO at the end of his contract, by the Isles seem to be sure this is their guy, or else he's going to be hard to trade away.

Hard to trade away? Try impossible! The ONLY way this works for them is if he turns into a superstar, which he has shown no sign of doing thus far. Either way, cash for life sums up this deal very nicely.

At this point in time the best you can say about Dipietro is that he is average. He has some obvious holes in his game at this time. he's still young and will probably get better but the Islanders may have just saddled themselves with an overpriced goaltender for the next 15 years. Certainly a 15 year contract makes the guy untradeable. So they are stuck with him if he has plateaued. And if he has there is a good chance the islanders have no hope of competing for anything until that contract expires, the cap increases significantly or they find a young cheap goaltender while having a mult-million dollar backup. This is the Turek deal times 4.

"So, Mr. Meerschaum, why exactly have you appeared before this court seeking to appoint yourself as sole committee for the Wang estate when you seem to have no connection to Mr. Wang, his family or business interests whatsoever?"

"Solely in the interests of protecting Mr. Wang and the Wang family, your honour. It has become patently obvious with this recent signing by the Islanders that Charles Wang has become totally, utterly and clinically insane. A cackling, drooling idiot possessing a faulty, misfiring brainstem and with no control over whatever feeble mental functions he may have formerly possessed. It would be dangerous, given his present diminished mental state, to grant any authority to Mr. Wang's former agents or advisors, as he has clearly surrounded himself with sycophants and mental midgets whose shakey grasp of reality may even be less tenuous than Mr. Wang's own. Take this Snow fellow for instance, he was formerly employed stopping speeding frozen globs of rubber travelling at over 90 mph with his head. Hardly an appropriate apprenticeship to manage a multi-billion dollar empire. No, your honor, the only way the Wang family can be protected in these circumstances is by moving control over all of their considerable financial worth to an arm's length third party, a complete and utter stranger untainted by former dealings with Mr. Wang and his band of lunatics whatsoever, who will prudently and faithfully manage and administer the Wang assets from the safety and comfort of a new Wang corporate headquarters to be located on a yacht in the Carribean (solely, for tax planning purposes, your honor) . . ."